


Alliance

by Leni



Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 18:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2782550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leni/pseuds/Leni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Anne had never worn the crown?</p><p>"After Queen Katherine's death, Anne keeps her head held high and doesn't let the whispers at Whitehall deter her from carrying out the queen's last wishes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alliance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> Written for Tigriswolf at [Comment Fic. Prompt: **a world where Anne Boleyn was mistress but never queen.**](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/400060.html?thread=66553788#t66553788)

_January 30th, 1536_

After Queen Katherine's death, Anne keeps her head held high and doesn't let the whispers at Whitehall deter her from carrying out the queen's last wishes.

Let them laugh at her. As if she didn't already know she has no chance to stand at the altar when Henry next weds. Used and discarded, they say, and used again when the mood strikes their king.

As if they wouldn't give up their treasures for a chance to be in her shoes.

No, she doesn't care about them.

Anne has more important things to do.

"Your Highness," she says as she sinks into a curtsey before Mary, counting the seconds until the girl bids her back up. She and Mary will never be easy acquaintances, but Anne is mother to the princess's only living sibling, and if Katherine herself couldn't bring herself to hate little Elizabeth, Mary will do her best to follow her mother's example. "I am at your orders."

The words aren't as hard to say as they would have been a few years ago. Time hasn't been kind to Anne's pride, but she doesn't regret the loss very often.

Pride served her little, while she still flaunted it around.

She doesn't like bending her knee before Katherine's daughter, but she'd do - and has done - much worse for the sake of her own little girl. Elizabeth might never wear the English crown, but with her older sister settling a hefty dowry on her, there's no telling what marriage can be secured for her.

Even kings and princes have need of English gold, after all, and Elizabeth already shows signs of becoming a redheaded beauty like her namesake. In these chaotic times, who is to say that the bastard daughter of Henry VIII doesn't deserve to have the highest powers abroad fight for her hand?

But first, Anne must see Mary married and on the throne.

And happy, too. 

( _Oh, please, Anne. Make sure my daughter will smile after all this!_ )

A difficult task that Katherine has put to her, Anne thinks, not a little amused to know that she's willing to carry it out, when Katherine's wishes had been Anne's penance for almost a decade.

She owes the older woman that much, at least. 

"Lady Pembroke," Mary says after a few moments, looking hesitant before she motions to the chair closest to her. Without needing to be told, her ladies retreat to their labors, giving them enough space for privacy. Few believed the news about Anne Boleyn becoming a favorite in the queen's chambers, and even less people understood it. At her young age, Mary certainly hasn't the wisdom or experience to untangle such unlikely friendship, but she doesn't question her mother's judgment. If Katherine of Aragon believed one of her husband's whores to be worthy of trust, then Mary will force herself to do likewise.

The Boleyn is good at intrigue, everyone knows.

Mary isn't as young as to dismiss what help the woman can give.

"Her Majesty... My mother told me she'd ask this from you." Mary's voice is still scratchy from so much crying, and her face is pale and drawn after so many days and nights divided between kneeling by her mother's sickbed or at the chapel while the queen's ladies bathed her. Neither a daughter's company nor her faithful prayers had saved Katherine, but at least Mary can rest at ease to have done all in her power to make her mother comfortable in her last days. She looks Anne in the eye and reminds herself that her mother's counsel has never led her wrong. "She wanted us to be-"

The next word sticks in her throat, tasting too much of a lie. She cannot tell an untruth mere hours after laying her mother to rest!

"To be in accord," Anne says, recognizing the girl's unwillingness to name herself the friend of the woman who had been her father's acknowledged mistress - and was rumored to still share his bed. Pride runs through the Tudor veins just like ambition runs in her own (a fine legacy for her daughter, she sometimes thinks with a smirk - and sometimes the same thought makes her blood run cold). "Let me help you, Your Highness," she tells Katherine's daughter, going as far as to seek her hands with her own. "Let me be your eyes and your ears, and give me leave to share my advice."

"And in exchange?" Mary asks, with a hardness in her expression that reminds Anne that this girl is Henry's daughter as well.

"The favor of the highest lady in the land, of course," Anne says, allowing herself a little smirk at the memory of wanting to grab that title for herself.

Mary doesn't share the humor, but after a while her face softens and she nods. "For my mother's memory."

"Yes. In her memory, I'll do all I can for your sake, Princess."

It is the truth.

She and Katherine might have been enemies, once, and grown bitter for it. They had insulted each other, and wished the worst on the other's stubborness - one for holding onto her crown, and the other for trying to steal it for herself. But that had been before Anne bore a girl, and two miscarriages after her.

If only she had conceived Elizabeth later, she thinks sometimes. If only the Pope had forbidden their union while she and Henry still had hoped for a boy... If Henry hadn't sent back for Katherine before Anne was out of her childbirth bed, obviously afraid that trying to deny his marriage had cursed him to having no sons at all... Then she would be filling Katherine's shoes to perfection, Anne knows, with her one little daughter to protect and a string of lost pregnancies to enrage her husband against her.

No. Better this way, after all.

"Will you do as I ask, Lady Pembroke?"

The girl is honest, at least, about wanting Anne's complete devotion. It will do her well to be a little disappointed, unlike the father who'd wage war against the ocean if it didn't turn purple at his whim. "As long as it benefits Your Highness," she answers, and to herself, _and Elizabeth, of course_.

The princess's hands make to slip away from her, but at the last moment, like a drowning man with a rope, she grasps Anne's hands again. "I want to believe you, madame. But I am surrounded by liars and pretenders - so I must know... _why_?"

Anne smiles, having expected this question now that Katherine isn't here to spare her daughter from the hard truths. "Because we are weak, us women. We are but pawns, no matter how high we rise. But," she adds when the girl narrows her eyes, furious at the unflattering comparison, "your mother was a wise woman. She taught me that together, we can be as powerful as the man standing between us."

Mary blushes at such a bold description of the situation between her parents and Anne, but she rallies quickly. "But..." She sits straight and hardens her gaze. "But it was you who stood between them!"

Anne shakes her head. To be that young again. That naive! "I did nothing but fall in love, Your Highness. His Majesty did the rest."

It's not completely true, of course. But what good would her hints and her directions have been, if Henry hadn't been glad to listen to her suggestions and put them into action?

But he'd barely visited her after Elizabeth's birth; his disappointment had been that great. And after that first miscarriage...

It had been a desperate move, to turn to Henry's wife when it was obvious that he had tired of her. But Katherine, perhaps as tired of their battle as Anne had been, perhaps as weary after her time of disgrace in Kimbolton Castle, hadn't turned her away. They were both mothers, after all, and they both had come to fear that Henry would set his daughters aside in a second if he ever fathered another boy.

Together, they'd outsmarted the other players at court and set the right women onto Henry's path. Older women, experienced women. Women who intuited their king's true temper and had the good sense to prevent a pregnancy that would tie them to his whims.

The wife and the mistress. The twice-royal daughter, born to be England's queen, and the woman who'd earned her title as marchioness on her back.

What strange pair they had made.

No wonder half the court still disbelieved that they had even been on speaking terms.

"And all that is past, after all. If there was a quarrel between your mother and myself, we solved our differences a long time ago." That, Mary knows is true. How the girl had glared at her, those first months after she'd been readmitted as Katherine's lady-in-waiting! But her mother had spoken to her and, little by little, the princess had softened toward her. "What matters now is the future. Your future, Mary."

Anne knows the girl will agree when she doesn't protest the use of her name.

They can help each other, just like she and Katherine had done.

Anne, by giving the queen true support, when all but one of her ladies had been sent back to Spain or married English lords and sworn their loyalties to their new masters. Claiming that it was better to count with the queen in their debt rather than struggle daily for the king's favor, Anne had convinced her father and brother - and eventually her uncle - to strengthen the queen's position.

Henry would not be divorcing Katherine, after all. Better to cut their losses and adapt to the circumstances, wasn't it? 

(And now, wouldn't it be best to court the sympathy of the apparent heir, when Henry had proved unable to father a healthy son? Anne didn't doubt that her uncle would listen. He was a logical man, after all, almost cold-blooded as he considered each step he took. And where Thomas Howard led, a good portion of the court followed.)

In return, Katherine had shielded Anne from Henry's displeasure. Without the queen's support, Anne would have been sent into an unwanted marriage and permanent retirement to the country, possibly even forced to leave Elizabeth behind if keeping his daughter close pleased Henry's fancy. Instead she'd had an old husband ailing in one of the best rooms of Whitehall, too pleased by the advantages of taking the king's discards to make many demands on her.

God rest his soul, but she is grateful to the man for giving her name some respectability in those few months.

Better a widow than the king's whore.

And better to take the veil than to become Henry's wife, she's come to understand.

"I am the Princess of England," Mary says, tilting her chin in much the same pose as when Katherine reminded Henry that she had generations of kings and queens supporting her claim to royal blood, while he had only a messy battlefield to thank for his throne. (It had been said in private, of course, and it had enraged Henry so much that he'd forgotten to secure Anne's commitment to a marriage of his liking) "My future is set, madame."

"Even after the king remarries? You know the Council has been parading the portraits of potential brides even as your mother lay on her deathbed."

Mary pales, but forces a nod of acknowledgement. "It's his right," she mumbles, obviously unhappy at the very idea. "An alliance with another country will make us stronger."

How she would have hated it, if Henry had married Anne! The Boleyns have nothing their king has not given them, and certainly no armies or power to bring to the union! How easily Henry would have been rid of her, when even Spain's displeasure didn't stop him from sending Katherine away for entire months!

Whichever girl Henry chooses next, Anne will take care to keep her in her prayers. He might act as the most charming courtier while he thinks himself in love, but he is merciless when those feelings sour and wilt.

"Indeed," she says. "A new bride for His Majesty. Perhaps a new prince for England?"

Mary stands up abruptly. "If it's God's will."

Anne nods. She may believe that Henry won't father sons, but she can't be _sure_. And too many powerful people won't hesitate to erode Mary's position if it means placing themselves in the favor of the new queen.

The potential mother of the next king has a power of her own; Anne remembers that rush of petitioners very well. And even now there's a cluster of well-wishers when the rumors point at her belly and wonder whether it will get rounder in the following months.

Yes, a woman carrying the king's child is more powerful than his daughters.

Elizabeth is safe, too young to be of importance beyond her marriageable prospects - and those are poor yet, as Henry refuses to think of her before he's made a proper arrangement for Mary, and how can he decide which suitor will fit his older daughter best, when it's not sure whether she will be a princess forever or ascend to the throne after his death?

He will remarry quickly, Anne knows. The better to answer that question within all possible haste.

And while he remains without a son, he will be good to his daughters. Henry is a doting father, for all his faults. Katherine had smiled until the end, remembering their first years together, and even at the last dance she'd attended, she'd looked on fondly as Henry led Mary into the first dance. Anne will also forgive him much as long as he keeps their daughter in the style of a princess except for the title. She also has good memories of their first years, and she keeps them close for when Henry asks for her company through the night.

It isn't difficult, to love Henry. It isn't even that hard to earn his love; a little flattery, an intriguing smile, a challenge that even a king must strive to conquer (but conquer he must, in the end).

No, love comes easily when the man is as passionate as Henry.

But it is folly to believe oneself safe from his cruelty because of that love.

"And you will help me?" Mary asks, with the air of someone who has suffered Henry's cruelties as well. Nothing will erase from her memory the time she was kept away from her mother, unable even to exchange a letter. "Should a boy be born?"

"And even if it's not." Anne stands, too, placing herself before the princess. "You spoke of alliance, Your Highness, and how it strengthens those who enter one. My strength can be yours; my knowledge and what power I manage."

Just as Katherine had done for Elizabeth, by making sure that Henry's displeasure with Anne didn't reflect on his treatment of Anne's child. Now it's Anne's turn to watch for Mary's well-being in the turbulent times coming ahead. A princess, even the apparent heir to the throne, has much to fear if her father's next wife will give him the long-awaited son.

"You pledge your strength, madame," Mary says, aware that Anne isn't speaking in vain. A former royal mistress, with property and a title of her own, the Duke of Norfolk at her back, and the king's ear when he asks for her advice. Yes, the Marchioness of Pembroke has power still. But not enough for certain things... "Just as mine will be Elizabeth's, when the time comes?" 

Anne smiles. Mary was a clever girl. Good. She would need it in the months ahead. "Should Elizabeth need it." And she would, no matter how Anne would try to shield her. Bastard she may be, but a king's daughter would always be a target both for those seeking to benefit from her standing or undercut it. "But for now, are we... in accord?"

With a tight movement, Mary nods.

"With your permission, then." Anne bows again in farewell, moving to leave when Mary makes a gesture of dismissal.

The princess's voice stops her. "Come back soon, Lady Pembroke. We have much to discuss."

Anne smiled a little. Katherine may be dead, but there were still two powerful women working together in Henry's court.

There might be hope for them yet.

 

The End  
16/12/14


End file.
